But the crux of the entire editing effort for me is striking the balance between the desire to make language lean without diluting the vision or idea.
Then, there is the tinkering before sharing it for publication and the inevitable revisit before compiling it into a book as well. It began with numerous restructuring efforts and there were many more small tweaks as I drew closer to the form that we see now. I write digitally and can see at least eight recorded drafts in my final document itself. There were about six months between the first and current draft. How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? (And can you share a photograph of your rough drafts with pen markings on it?) This poem went through several drafts as I recall. (Above Left: Aditya Shankar's digital rough draft on "The Shuttlecock In Myself" Credit and Copyright by Aditya Shankar) I’m so glad that we picked this poem, because it brings me deep joy to remember the process of writing a poem that was tough to materialize. In fact, I end up revising poems that I abandon/publish in journals and books. Hence, the concept of a final form of a poem is something I question. But as the writing himself is evolving, I guess it is tough to define a limit to this. Ideally, I would like poems with potential to grow as much as they could.
That’s probably where the writing took off and I ended up canceling the tendencies of the poem to offer ‘easier’ routes and conclusions to stay on course. Reliving or recreating the highs that I already went through with that piece (or most pieces for that matter) was one of the challenges. In fact, very annoyingly, it couldn’t totally remember even what it heard. It felt like a long way away from what it could achieve. In other words, I’m disappointed with my first draft almost always, including this poem.
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